Cosmic Trigger Reading Group, Week One!

The cover of Cosmic Trigger, as it looked back in the day 

By Charles Faris, reading group guest blogger

Greetings and welcome to the RAWIllumination Cosmic Trigger Reading Group. This week we are going to crack the cover and dive into the new edition of Cosmic Trigger, published by Hilaritas Press, the new imprint organized by Bob’s daughter Christina and his friend Rasa of the RAW Trust.

Right off the bat I want to offer big thanks Tom Jackson of RAWIllumination for hosting this reading and for giving me the opportunity to facilitate it, and to Christina and Rasa of RAW Trust for all of their hard work creating Hilaritas Press and publishing new editions of a large chunk of the works of Robert Anton Wilson.

As a complete package, the new Cosmic Trigger reads a bit like an archeological text showcasing the discovery of a time capsule from 1977, unearthed from somewhere up in the Berkeley Hills. In reverse chronological order we have the original text and illustrations, complete with Forewords by Dr. Timothy Leary and Afterwords by rebel physicist Saul-Paul Sirag. Nine years later and nine pages earlier we have the preface from 1986 written by Old Bob himself, an obligatory attempt by the author of a challenging text to “answer the most frequent questions and to correct the most persistent misunderstandings.” 

Finally and most recently we see on the title page that there is an Introduction by John Higgs, author of Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the 20th Century, which is apropos, as Mr. Higgs has a high professional interest in Bob and Tim, and his lens of introduction leans heavily on the notion of Time.

Cover art for the new Hilaritas Press edition of Cosmic Trigger, the official text for this reading group. 

This week we are going to take a look at that Introduction to see what kind of a framework it can offer us as we prepare to read and discuss a book that is almost 40 years old, and next week we will dig into Bob’s preface and Tim’s Forewords. 

For those who do not have a copy of the new edition, you can find the Introduction by John Higgs here. Just click on the picture of the cover to Look Inside, and then click on the table of contents in order to access a preview of the Introduction.

John Higgs packs a lot into his introduction — Geoffrey Chaucer, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens; the counterculture’s mid-1970’s Northern California heartland; psychedelic drug culture and cocaine-dominated culture; humanity as an immortal interstellar race; The Beatles, The KLF, and Julian Cope; pookah’s and the Sirius Transmissions; and he wraps it all around a notion that truly great books are both completely Of Their Time as well as Timeless.

In the course of illustrating both of these ideas Higgs also opines upon Cosmic Trigger as “the story of one man. . . which connects the personal mythologies of a wide network of people,” ultimately offering up Cosmic Trigger as an all-purpose map for navigating tidal waves of meaning as well as deserts of meaninglessness, an ontological swiss army knife, as it were. Wielded by a guerrilla, no doubt.

“It affects people, this book. It can send your life off in strange directions.”

Last week we asked you to tell us how you found Cosmic Trigger (which you can still do!), and this week I’m asking you what you did with her once you found her! Please read the intro and then chime in to let us know what strange directions Cosmic Trigger has sent you in.

Next week we will cover the 1986 Preface (which can be found here if you have an older edition) as well as the Dr. Timothy Leary’s original Forewords. Happy reading and please comment—the deeper the discussion, the deeper the experience.